PRESIDENT ERDOGAN ANGRY OVER POPE’S ‘MISTAKE’
Gulf Times, Qatar
April 15 2015
Istanbul
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday expressed anger over
the Pope’s use of the word genocide to describe the mass killings
of Armenians in World War I, saying such talk was nonsense and the
pontiff should not repeat such a mistake again.
Ankara at the weekend summoned the Vatican nuncio and recalled the
Turkish envoy to the Holy See in a furious reaction to Pope Francis’
description of the killings of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman
forces.
“If politicians and religious leaders do the job of historians then
we will not get to the truth and only end with nonsense,” Erdogan said
in a speech in Ankara in his first reaction to the pope’s comments.
“Respected pope: I condemn this mistake and warn against making it
again,” he said to applause from an audience of businessmen.
Turkey has vehemently rejected the use of the term genocide to
describe the Ottoman era killings and is keeping to its line in the
100th anniversary of the tragedy.
Armenians say 1.5mn of their ancestors were killed in a targeted
campaign of extermination by Ottoman forces. The Turkish government
said hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Christians were killed on
both sides in a wartime tragedy.
The comments by the Pope, who visited Turkey last November, have led
to unprecedented attacks on the pontiff by Turkish officials.
EU minister Volkan Bozkir said Monday that the Pope had made the
comment because of a strong Armenian lobby in his homeland of
Argentina.
“I think Pope Francis made this statement because he is an Argentine.
Unfortunately, in Argentina, the Armenian diaspora is dominant in
the press and business world,” Bozkir said, quoted by the official
Anatolia news agency.
Referring to the influx of war criminals to Latin America after World
War II, Bozkir declared that Argentina “welcomed Nazis, who were the
lead performers of the Jewish Holocaust”.
At St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican on Sunday, the Pope described the
Armenians as the victims of “the first genocide of the 20th century”,
rankling Turkey, which immediately recalled its ambassador to the
Vatican for consultations in Ankara.
Turkish officials have slammed the Pope’s remarks as historically
“false”.
Turkey will also have to deal with a vote in the European Parliament
today on a resolution which calls for joining “the commemoration of
the centenary of the Armenian Genocide”.
The legislative body of the European bloc in 1987 recognised the
events as genocide. Several European nations have also recognised
the massacres as such, though others have refrained from doing so,
some fearing damage to their relations with Turkey.
On Monday, a spokesman for UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had
described the killings as an “atrocity crime,” and not genocide.
Official commemorations of the massacres are to take place on April
24 in Armenia.
From: A. Papazian